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Samuel Graves grew up in a pit of vipers. His mother was practically absentee; his father, teetering on insane; his sister, his beautiful sister, who believed in the wrong principles because she had no other choice. He grew up with stories of the Giantkiller- in any other household, to any other mage, he would have been the saving grace, a light at the end of the tunnel. To Sam, the Giantkiller was a curse. He was a victim, but he bore his father’s name and lived in his home. This hero was not his friend.
When Sam was eight, the Giantkiller was caught in the house in the middle of the day. He was at lunch, his sister quietly discussing particulars of her business with their father, when a guard told them. It was the scaredest he’d ever been. No one was safer than Sandry, and the Giantkiller was her sworn enemy- how could he not be scared, at the biggest opposition to his safety?
Sam Graves grew up knowing that when he heard gunshots, he should bury himself in a book, learn something new- something more exciting than the Elsewhere’s anxious tugging, than the adrenaline flooding his system as he worked up a panic.
For his birthday one year, Sam received a book on magic knots from his sister. He learned how to craft spells for safety, for power, for a quick escape. He drafted glorious curses for the Giantkiller, dreamed of how they would be his saving grace one day.
Sam Graves learned how to braid. His sister would begin to rant about her day, her work, as Sam crafted beauty with her hair. He went slowly, meticulously. The days when Sandry felt the least safe, he took his magic and knotted it straight into her hair. They were terrible to comb out, but they were always worth it.
(“I know how to braid,” he would one day tell a teasing friend as he struggled through her hair. His spells were too complex to weave into this mane, but that was okay. Laney Jones knew how to weave her own knots.
“Not like me,” she said. Grey silently agreed- this was not the same.)
Sanders Grey walked out of the mountains where Samuel Graves had lived.
Grey found a home in the guide who shared his room, with his miniature herb garden next to his own private library. He found a home among the walls of text, ideas he would never need to know but craved desperately. He found his home in ignoring the twitch of magic, the way he did best. He drowned his gangly fingers in ink, and he loved every minute.
Grey found a home unexpectedly, in a fish shop, a study League (Jack’s luck wasn’t all his own). Grey stood back up against the wall and watched as his League took down the group holding the heist, adrenaline nothing compared to back home. Slowly, Grey fell in; with Laney, her impeccable knots- with Jack, and the way he hid his heroics under the guise of guide- with Rupert, who always packed for him, who always had an extra of his favorite granola bars, who watched the subtle signs of sparks and never said a word. None of them fit their roles quite right, but all of them belonged, and that was okay.
Grey spent a year (at first, reluctantly) helping these three forces of nature. He was smarter than they were; he cultivated that. He was stronger than they were; he didn’t always like that, but he tried to use it well. He stood in the river, shouting advice as they fought murderous river kraken. He tied knots with Laney (“I didn’t copy it wrong, I improved it.” He couldn’t help but agree.) and read books while Jack and Rupert argued tactics.
This family was not quite what it seemed to be. Everyone is more than they appear. Laney was not a mage; Grey was the most powerful one.
Grey still felt that punch to the gut when Sandry greeted Jack as Giantkiller.
Grey had spent countless hours with Jack. They fought together, argued with each other, laughed and ate together for two years. How could Grey have missed something so vital, so terrifying, so game-changing?
And yet. Jack did not know Grey’s name was Graves. He did not know that just the idea of his escapades, his rescues, horrified Grey. All Jack knew was the little sage who wanted to join the library (who had inkstained fingers, and twitched, and could kill them all if he wanted to). He couldn’t blame Jack; victims are not supposed to be afraid of heroes.
Heroes live in bakeries. This made more sense when he met Bea. A lot of things made sense, then- Jack, sad about being lucky. The way he sometimes glanced at Laney like she was a ghost, or could pick locks. The way when he yelled Jones he sometimes did a double-take, a fresh wound opening. How he swordfought so well- and talked tactics so fluently- and knew the smell of slavers- and was on first-name basis with the Rangers.
Grey panicked, a little, when the Rangers caught him. He’d been ready to run for a little while now, ever since his sister had told him to go. He could get his badge in the mail; he didn’t owe Jack, or anyone, anything; the Library was calling. Then a shaft exploded, and- and the Library wouldn’t miss him any more if he was a week or two later. He went back.
Grey went back, and met his father. He stood up tall and stared down his father the way anyone else stared down the barrel of a gun. He did not shake so much as he usually did- he’d just been damped, of course, but he was also braver, after fighting walking beasts of Elsewhere fire. His father was no longer the scariest thing he’d ever seen.
There was no funeral to attend, later. Cassandra was too busy, picking up the pieces as the newly crowned mayor to host one. Grey wouldn’t have gone anyway. His name no longer included Graves, and his father didn’t deserve it anyway. He was mostly glad to be done of the business, because he was nearly overdue on the Library. He had places to be and heroing to ignore.
Samuel Graves had left his sister behind, stuck in a viper’s pit, hated on every side. Sanders Grey returned to his sibling, and could offer her nothing. He was not quite so scared of the world he’d left behind, or the people it held, but one does not forgive such misdemeanors easily. Cassandra had hurt him in ways he’d never recover from- the most mercy he could show would be to leave her tied up, alive, for the proper authorities, and leave. (He would send her a birthday card, decades later- that would become their reconciliation, or as close as they could manage. It was addressed to Sandry, and it was signed by Grey. She kept it on her dresser for the rest of her life. There were no more words for her after, but she didn’t need any.)
Grey was not a hero. He did not save because he did not ask to. He was not a mage, because he would also never ask for the swirling heat of the Elsewhere scratching his fingertips. He was a sage, because his home was the stacks of books he so diligently managed and the ink he drowned his hands in. He was not built, so much as shaped, was not a force of nature so much as forced by nature. His adventures were not quests; they were roadblocks, obstructions from his destinations.
Sanders Grey did not owe it to his sister to spare her. He did not owe it to Jack, to stick around in the place he’d never wanted to be, to fight battles he didn’t deserve to fight. He found his home, his path, his friends. He knew where he wanted to be. And at the end of the war, he turned heel and marched on.
He’d waited long enough for the Library.